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Data, Collaboration, Open Government

Calling on the Mayor – Show coders some love!

Once again, in another California city not too far, far away, a city is showing leadership and is capturing the talents, passions and excitement of an incredibly valuable, natural resource- the tech community. Sounds like San Diego had a cracking hackathon last month and some interesting new tools were built, but most importantly this event was endorsed, supported and the key apps from the competition will be sustained with help from the Mayor of San Diego, Jerry Sanders.

In Oaktown we have seen some interest in this world expressed by a few city councilors so far, although barely two city staff attended the main Code for Oakland event last year and none attended the OpenData Hackathon later in 2011. It seems our new deputy city administrator Scott Johnson is interested in the developer world and how it can benefit our city but once again, to really move stuff we need the support of our Mayor. Please understand the huge potential for the city and it’s residents. This is not a bunch of OWS hackers looking to jack with the system, we’re (others at least are…) a community of immensely talented, broadly experienced, civicly interested software developers, coders, builders, engineers, scientists who would love to get some love from our city leaders.